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India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

science.org

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Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#51

Post by tomjen3 »

bhouston wrote: post #47

This is good to a degree. But it does mean India joins much of the rest of the world with sub-replacement fertility with just a few outliers. The challenge now switches to how to move from sub-replacement to sustainable fertility. Japan and South Korea are leaders in sub-replacement fertility with not that much success in finding a path towards sustainable population. Both I believe are still dropping. This is the gr…

I don't believe it is possible during the natural development of a free country to get back to having lots of children.

You can do things like ban childhood vacinations so lots of children die, but that isn't exactly going to make you very popular.

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#53

Post by bhouston »

zpeti wrote: post #48

Global population will basically top out at 9-10bn. I look forward to the problems we will face then, and the apocalyptic narratives the media will invent about this new problem. Here's my shot at a few: - Even with better quality of life its going to be hard to make people who are over 70 work productively. But without children less and less people will need to take care of this large old age group. And they will ne…

> I predict these issues will cause bigger problems than population expansion ever did.

I think that unfettered population growth would have caused massive issues -- you could say that global warming is one of its legacies. But there will be a whole host of new issues as we face this new challenge of moving towards sustainable fertility.

I suspect we will see a lot of government intervention with incentives towards larger families (increases bonuses as you have more children) and starting families earlier (rather than delaying to to their 30s.)

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#54

Post by lotsofpulp »

tharne wrote: post #29
Swenrekcah wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I’m fairly sure they work their asses off already. Maybe not that gets measured in GDP thought.

I was going to say this. We have this weird habit in the West of trivializing raising one's own children, as if that's not "real work". A lot folks would rather raise their children instead of outsourcing it to strangers just to work a job they hate.

Evidently, a lot of people would like to have financial freedom and accept the costs of outsourcing some portion of child rearing.

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#55

Post by [deleted] »

tedivm wrote: post #17
wavefunction wrote: post #3

My "modest proposal" for humane population reduction is: every individual is born with the right to have one child. A couple then, can have two children, which is below the natural replacement rate of 2.1 leading to a gradual reduction in human population naturally. People who don't want to have kids or can't for whatever reason could sell their right to others who want to have more than their normal allotment while…

I hope by "modest proposal" you mean "satirical take meant to show how awful people are being", which is the whole point of the original modest proposal. The big issue isn't the number of people, but the amount of energy and resources they require. The carbon emissions per 1000 people in India is 0.922 metric tons a year. For the United States that number is 19.86 metric tons a year. That's a difference of over 21 ti…

[deleted]

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#56

Post by ashwinm »

Callmenorm wrote: post #2

Isn't this going to create another problem. Where the country gets old before it gets rich?

indian median age is still 28, so there is still time to get relative "rich" ($8-10k per capita as china today) in the next 20-25 years.

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#57

Post by drivebycomment »

wavefunction wrote: post #3

My "modest proposal" for humane population reduction is: every individual is born with the right to have one child. A couple then, can have two children, which is below the natural replacement rate of 2.1 leading to a gradual reduction in human population naturally. People who don't want to have kids or can't for whatever reason could sell their right to others who want to have more than their normal allotment while…

You think this is ethical? Clearly you have a very different ethics that I do. Also, this propsal is unnecessary and shows complete lack of demographic transition - we already know how to stop population growth in an ethical way and that is to improve healthcare, education (especially women), and general economic welfare. No other solutions necessary, nor have proven to be effective.

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#58

Post by bhouston »

tomjen3 wrote: post #51
bhouston wrote: post #47

This is good to a degree. But it does mean India joins much of the rest of the world with sub-replacement fertility with just a few outliers. The challenge now switches to how to move from sub-replacement to sustainable fertility. Japan and South Korea are leaders in sub-replacement fertility with not that much success in finding a path towards sustainable population. Both I believe are still dropping. This is the gr…

I don't believe it is possible during the natural development of a free country to get back to having lots of children. You can do things like ban childhood vacinations so lots of children die, but that isn't exactly going to make you very popular.

> I don't believe it is possible during the natural development of a free country to get back to having lots of children.

50 to 100 years ago we probably didn't think it was natural to have humans willingly limit their population growth - it was viewed as completely unnatural, but it has basically happened nearly everywhere.

I think you can do it via government rewards to those having larger families and starting them earlier. Housing discounts. Rebates. Tax credits.

I believe Israel does this in combination with being religiously conservative, discouraging/banning most abortions, combined with a lot of government incentives, discounts -- in fact many of the people moving into the occupied territories are people starting families as the government discounts the housing there.

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#60

Post by gizmo686 »

bhouston wrote: post #47

This is good to a degree. But it does mean India joins much of the rest of the world with sub-replacement fertility with just a few outliers. The challenge now switches to how to move from sub-replacement to sustainable fertility. Japan and South Korea are leaders in sub-replacement fertility with not that much success in finding a path towards sustainable population. Both I believe are still dropping. This is the gr…

Is there a need to a sustainable population rate?

There are about 8 billion humans on the planet. We can sustain a sub replacement birthrate for generations.

There is a good chance we can sustain it for long enough to solve aging; or at least significantly push back the ~100 year limit to human life. Once we do that, we will need generations of sub replacement fertility just to compensate for having more generations being alive.

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